


And yet again another spring

by Contra



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 16:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13955148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: In which it took Mats three tries to sew on a button, Neven pretends to listen to a presentation about foreign aid and they're both not nineteen anymore. // Or: Sometimes things are what they are. [Hubotic/Non-AU]





	And yet again another spring

**Author's Note:**

> I bet you thought this pairing was dead! Well guess again!
> 
> @kawkaandotherpuns made me do it
> 
>  
> 
> Written to: [Karussell - Als ich fortging](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoBFBG03tm0)  
> Not as bad as it sounds

 

 

Missing Mats comes in waves that sneak up on you. First it’s just dumb nostalgia, or whatever the right word is for remembering things that didn’t happen in the end. It’s just that winter is over, it’s just the light of the sun-

(He has a kid now. He lives in Munich. Neither of you is nineteen anymore.)

And then suddenly it’s 2 AM and you’re in your new bed in France and should be sleeping, but instead your eyes are burning from the bright-angry screen of your smartphone, pictures of his happy little family. Pictures of his happy fake smile.

You don’t need him, that’s the truth.

 

It’s the truth that remains the truth when you go to training, a pitch you’ve never shared with him, and then your bed, much later.

It’s the truth when you type out those congratulations that the person you’re trying to be would have texted him weeks ago. It’s still the truth when you cannot hit send.

You don’t need him, your body can attest to that, your injured body that made it back to the pitch without him, the truth is, if you had needed him, you wouldn’t be here-

(Another truth is – but you want.)

 

You just wish you could stop dreaming about him. Him at eighteen, nineteen, twenty, both of you, an abundance of sunlight. Something just barely on the wrong side of real. It’s not even that you miss him, because you remember what happened, going to the team celebrations still feeling his hands on your body, still his laughter stuck in the back of your throat, and him kissing her right in front of you, smiling his happy fake smiles.

You remember how he looked at you, stolen honest little glances when no one else noticed, and you know he was sorry and you know what he wanted, and you kept thinking he might actually do it, choose you, but he always went back to her.

(What is the word for when you still can’t stop hoping for things that did not happen in the end?)

And of course you remember what you felt like. Secret. Sordid. Second-best.

 

The truth is, you still want him. It’s March again, and not the first March without him, you should be used to this by now

(the way his hair fell into his eyes and you were laughing in all your twenty-two-ness, Dortmund was never beautiful except exactly like this)

but when the invitation comes to the conference in Munich, your entire body sings _yes._

 

It’s about building sustainable aid programs, almost ironically, but of course you know he’ll be there. You know him well enough to anticipate him right down to his flimsy excuses, he’ll have to pull strings to get invited, an effort he’d never admit to making for you. Fuck, you know even that dress shirt he wears as he stands in front of you, along with his happy fake smile.

(He wore it when he told the team about his engagement, well, the team and you, in the corner

the one fuck you always regretted, pathetic even by your standards, you pulled that shirt off him with enough force to tear off the top button, it’s sewn on again with a slightly different thread

you wonder if it’s a happy memory for him or a sad one, not that it matters of course, because it’s one that he kept)

“Neven,” and he sounds tired.

Is the baby keeping you up? would be polite thing to ask now. Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt either of you. Of course you don’t say it, because he isn’t everything you ever wanted, but he’s still quite a whole lot.

“Hey,” you greet him instead and you, too, have that practiced ease you know he can see through and you spare each other the small talk and just exchange a quick nod.

Missing him comes in waves. Right now, you are drowning.

That button, you think, he must have snuck back into the locker room to pick it up from the floor, he’s sitting two rows ahead of you during the presentation by Transparency International, he must have sewn it back on himself.

It’s so typically him, he could leave you there but not that fucking button, he can ignore you for months but come to this fucking conference pretending to care about overseas aid, he turns his head around and he’s smiling.

The only way you know it’s real is because it doesn’t look happy.

 

It takes eons until the conference is over, it takes minutes to ride the elevator up to your room.

His breath is calm and even beside you.

Your hand is steady as you put in your key-card.

You can smell his aftershave, it’s still Hugo Boss.

 

He pushes you against the door of your room as soon as it closes behind you, already one fist in your shirt and one in your hair. _Neven_ , he whispers, he looks older, he looks exactly the same. _Neven_ , you’re both almost thirty, you don’t need him but you wouldn’t do this if there was anything else on earth you could even imagine wanting, his voice is almost a sob now, his dumb lying voice, your name – so beloved.

 _This_ is the truth of it, the bare-bone naked truth, he loves you, you love him, both of you; liars.

Neven, he says, it’s the only thing he’s ever said, (Neven Neven) it’s the only thing he’ll ever say, forever, for(Never), for you and for him and for now.

You’re angry, you’re sorry, you finally touch him, out of all of the things that could be real, why did it have to be this?

But you are happy, most of all.

 

 

 

He looks peaceful asleep next to you and you don’t care what the truth is. Reality is curled up uselessly between you, filling the space between his hand and your ribcage and the wedding ring he took off and left in his jeans. He will leave and you love him and you’re both almost thirty.

His dress shirt is on the floor, the thread on the top button just a little bit whiter, you will leave him, too, but only in a few hours.

Right now, only he exists, man-made sunshine broken out of your yearning, and you exist, breathing beside him

and somewhere out there is a world full of spring.

**Author's Note:**

> I WROTE THE SUMMARY INTO THIS FIELD THREE TIMES IM TOO TIRED AND HAVENT USED AO3 IN FOREVER


End file.
